12 Most Pictorial Ways to Communicate Your Brand’s Ethos Socially

We’ve all heard the adage: “a picture is worth a thousand words” yet few businesses seem to understand its power, especially in their marketing and in particular, their social media marketing. Businesses of every size have the option to communicate a company’s character well beyond their traditional social marketing efforts typically conducted through LinkedIn or Twitter (to name a few).

With a growing list of channels and devices, there’s really no excuse for brands to rely on the written word to convey the value of their business. Need some direction? Consider these 12 Most Pictorial Ways to Communicate Your Brand’s Ethos Socially:

1. YouTube

The king of social video networks; creating a branded YouTube channel is free as is the uploading and sharing of videos. Have videos on your site? Post them to your YouTube channel first and then embed them on your site for an added SEO boost. Simple. Easy. Impactful.

2. Podcasts

As the options for mobile devices increase and broadband technologies improve (and become more cost effective), more people are taking their online experience on the road. Podcasts play into this channel well by providing bit sized video education, training or entertainment content that becomes available to the individual on-demand and at the touch of an icon as the need arises.

3. Video Testimonials

Sites like Yelp have propelled the now-famous “trust-agents” concept in social marketing, however a quick scan of video networks illustrates the fast growing trend for video reviews. Provide clients and fans simple options to create and post video testimonials. Content reviewed on video is perceived as more authentic and so more likely to impact the decision making process than written testimonials.

4. SlideShare

Your business probably has a vault full of powerful PowerPoint presentations detailing your business’ vision and mission statements, product benefits, etc. Why not upload them to a SlideShare business profile and gain a new set of followers there? Better yet, create PowerPoints that are not about your product but related business strategy that helps your customers while demonstrating your subject matter expertise.

5. LiveCasts

Technology now allows for “livecasts” to happen on-demand from any internet-based device and can be initiated by both client or customer service teams. Think of the power of a face-to-face chat with an airline customer service rep on your tablet when stuck at an airport or with a technical support person when you just can’t figure out the installation of a new media device you purchased for your home!

6. Integrated Media Ads

By 2016, 30% of pay-TV advertising will shift to newer viewing formats, including VOD, tablets and smartphones. Getting the customer’s attention will become even harder with so many new devices, let alone channels. What are you doing to augment your static banner ads?

7. Flickr

Upload product, personnel, event and other brand images to the photo network: Flickr. Remember to note the copyright setting you wish to apply to your images and tag them with appropriate keywords for greater visibility across both internal and Internet search engines.

8. YFrog/Lockerz/TwitPic

Tweets are a fun way to engage your audience in short sound bites but they can be even more powerful with appended images that are distributed through – and saved onto – one of these networks. Most Twitter apps have embedded plugins for these networks, which display the image with a mouse-over or automatically within the stream. Plus most have apps for quick uploading and viewing from mobile devices.

9. Vlogs

We’re all too busy to read the blogs we’ve subscribed to so why not stand out by producing Video Blogs (Vlogs) that feature you sharing your point of view visually? This is done easily enough with little-to-no editing skills via your smart phone or web cam.

10. Google+ Hangouts

One of Google+’s most powerful features for businesses is Google+ Hangouts where a group of colleagues can gather to communicate through a closed video chat. Consider inviting select followers to speak with your company President from time to time. Imagine the goodwill and branding impact!

11. Posterous

This network is intended more for Mobile blogging methods including sending an email, with attachments of photos, MP3s, documents, and video (both links and files). Still growing in popularity, social media elites consider Posterous to be the leading app for multi-media lifestreaming.

12. Facebook

Did you know that a typical Facebook profile photo has 3 likes and 2 comments and gets more attention than other images published to the site? How often are you changing your personal or business profile picture?

Whichever you choose, know that there are as many options to share your business’ ethos through images as through text. And it’s becoming just as easy for your audience to create video and image content. Providing them the opportunity and incentive to do so will help this effort greatly.

Did I miss any? What other channels are there for businesses to engage pictorially?

Sam Fiorella is a globetrotting interactive marketing strategist who has earned his stripes over the past 20 years in senior management roles with corporate sales &marketing teams as well as consulting for more than 30 marketing agencies. Sam’s experience with over 1600 Interactive projects during the past 15 years spans the government, finance & insurance, manufacturing, national retail and travel/tourism sectors.
Currently, Sam is the Chief Strategy Sensei at Sensei Marketing, where he is charged with strategic campaign guidance and marketing technology development that power the Sensei Customer Lifecycle Methodology. Sam is a respected blogger and popular keynote speaker on marketing, branding and social media communications having presented at more than 200 conferences in the past 2 years.
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